GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Kent County Administrator Al Vanderberg is calling on more community partners to invest in an affordable housing loan fund that has helped develop more than 400 housing units since it launched two years ago.

Vanderberg touted the success of the county’s $58 million revolving loan fund, designed to incentivize affordable housing development, during Kent County’s annual State of the County address Tuesday, Sept. 23.

Speaking to a crowd of more than 100 regional stakeholders, Vanderberg called for more investment into the fund, which he said offers “critical support to developers at a time when high interest rates and inflation have made housing projects more difficult to finance.”

“Demand for affordable housing continues to outpace supply, and developers need access to low-interest capital to keep projects moving,” he said. “If this fund is going to continue to make an impact, it will need to grow. We need more partners and more investment in this tool so we can keep chipping away at the shortage and ensure that more residents have a safe, stable place to call home.”

Kent County partnered with IFF, a community development finance institution, to launch the revolving loan fund in 2023. To date, the fund has doled out more than $36 million in loans, resulting in the development of more than 400 housing units, Vanderberg said.

“That’s meaningful progress — and it shows how partnerships can make a real difference in tackling the housing shortage,” he said.

A recent study showed Kent County needs an estimated 33,914 new housing units by 2029 to keep up with demand. That’s a 2% decrease from a previous analysis but a massive number that highlights the severity of the region’s housing shortage.

Between 2022 and 2024, Kent County added 6,000 new housing units, a classification that includes single-family homes, apartments, condominiums and townhomes.

Housing was one of several topics Vanderberg and Kent County Board Chair Ben Greene highlighted at the State of the County, an annual event aimed at sharing key investments made by the county and progress that is yet to come. Tuesday’s event took place in downtown Grand Rapids at DeVos Place.

Greene also highlighted a new program being implemented by the Kent County Sheriff’s Office this year will tap into surveillance cameras of participating local businesses to provide police with real-time video footage.

The Connect Kent County program will use community-based video feeds, license plate readers and multi-jurisdictional mapping, to create a real-time, countywide network of coordination. Greene said the program means faster response times for police across the county.

“At a time when some are considering weakening law enforcement, Kent County is strengthening it, giving our deputies and officers the tools to stay a step ahead of crime and keep families safe,” Greene said.

Schools throughout Kent County are already “plugging in” to the program, and the sheriff’s office will later announce how local businesses, institutions and residents can volunteer to link their existing security cameras, Greene said.

Vanderberg also announced on Tuesday that Kent County is planning to expand the facilities of its medical examiner’s office and partner with Michigan State University to train the next generation of forensic pathologists for a field that county officials say is facing a significant talent shortage nationally.

The county is working to secure a larger, state-of-the-art facility that can consolidate all of the office’s functions under one roof and meet the county’s evolving needs, Vanderberg said. That move will be coming before the board of commissioners for a vote later this year.

The medical examiner’s office, which is mandated by law, is responsible for investigating sudden, unexpected or suspicious deaths in the county, including deaths of children who don’t have significant medical histories. That includes performing autopsies and issuing death certificates for all deaths in Kent County.

The county’s proposed partnership with MSU will have the university provide services to the medical examiner’s office, Vanderberg said.The partnership will offer teaching opportunities to MSU students while potentially allowing the county to expand services to include such as forensic anthropology on-site.

“This partnership expands that classroom directly into the Medical Examiner’s Office, creating a unique training ground for the next generation of forensic pathologists in a field facing a national shortage of talent,” he said.

“By shortage, I mean about 440 pathologists who do autopsies for 340 million people in the United States.”

The proposed partnership with MSU will go before the Kent County Board of Commissioners for approval on Thursday, Sept. 25.